Chapter 22 #2
“No one can lead that army.” Chaghan let go of Altan’s collar. “Those people in the mountain are not like you. They’re not like Suni. You can’t control them, and you’re not going to try. I won’t let you.”
Chaghan raised his hands to push Altan again, but Altan grabbed them this time, seized his wrists and lowered them easily. He did not let them go. “Do you really think you can stop me?”
“This isn’t you,” Chaghan said. “This is about Speer. This is about your revenge. That’s all you Speerlies do, you hate and burn and destroy without consequence.
Tearza was the only one of you with any foresight.
Maybe the Federation was right about you, maybe it was best they burned down your island—”
“How dare you,” Altan said, his voice so quiet Rin pressed herself against the wall as if she could somehow get closer and make sure she was hearing right. Altan’s fingers tightened around Chaghan’s wrists. “You’ve crossed the line.”
“I’m your Seer,” Chaghan said. “I give you counsel, whether you want to hear it or not.”
“The Seer does not command,” Altan said. “The Seer does not disobey. I have no place for a disloyal lieutenant. If you won’t help me, then I’ll send you away. Go north. Go to the dam. Take your sister and do as we planned.”
“Altan, listen to reason,” Chaghan pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do as I command,” Altan said curtly. “Go, or leave the Cike.”
Rin sank back behind the wall, heart hammering.
She abandoned her post as soon as she heard Altan’s footsteps fading into the distance. Once she could no longer see his form from the gate, she darted down the steps and raced out onto the open road. She caught Chaghan and Qara as they were saddling a recovered gelding.
“Let’s go,” Chaghan told his sister when he saw Rin approaching, but Rin grabbed the reins before Qara could prod the horse forward.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Away,” Chaghan said tersely. “Please let go.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“We have orders to leave.”
“I overheard you with Altan.”
Qara muttered something in her own language.
Chaghan scowled. “Have you ever been able to mind your own business?”
Rin tightened her grip on the reins. “What army is he talking about? Why won’t you help him?”
Chaghan’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“So tell me. Who is Feylen?” Rin continued loudly. “Who is Huleinin? What did he mean, he’ll release the Gatekeeper?”
“Altan is going to burn down Nikan. I will not be responsible.”
“Burn down Nikan?” Rin repeated. “How—”
“Your commander has gone mad,” Chaghan said bluntly. “That is as much as you need to know. And you know the worst part? I think he’s meant to do this all along. I’ve been blind. This is what he’s wanted since the Federation marched on Sinegard.”
“And you’re just going to let him?”
Chaghan recoiled violently, as if he’d been slapped. Rin had a fear that he might yank on the reins and ride away, but Chaghan merely sat there, mouth slightly open.
She had never seen Chaghan speechless before. It scared her.
She wouldn’t have expected Chaghan to shrink from cruelty. Chaghan, alone among the Cike, had never displayed an ounce of fear about his power, about losing control. Chaghan reveled in his abilities. He relished them.
What could be so unthinkable that it horrified even Chaghan?
Without taking his eyes off Rin, Chaghan reached down, grasped the reins, and swung himself off the horse. She took two steps backward as he walked toward her. He stopped much closer to her than she would have liked. He studied her in silence for a long moment.
“Do you understand the source of Altan’s power?” he asked finally.
Rin frowned. “He’s a Speerly. It’s obvious.”
“Even the average Speerly was not half as powerful as Altan is,” said Chaghan. “Have you ever asked yourself why Altan alone among Speerlies survived? Why he was allowed to live when the rest of his kin were burned and dismembered?”
Rin shook her head.
“After the First Poppy War, the Federation became obsessed with your people,” said Chaghan.
“They couldn’t believe their Armed Forces had been bested by this tiny island nation.
That’s what spurred their interest in shamanism.
There has never been a Federation shaman.
The Federation needed to know how the Speerlies got their powers.
When they occupied the Snake Province, they built a research base opposite the island and spent the decades in between the Poppy Wars kidnapping Speerlies, experimenting on them, trying to figure out what made them special. Altan was one of those experiments.”
Rin’s chest felt very tight. She dreaded what might come next, but Chaghan continued, his voice as flat and emotionless as if he were reciting history lessons.
“By the time the Hesperians liberated the facilities, Altan had spent half his life in a lab. The Federation scientists drugged him daily to keep him sedated. They starved him. They tortured him to make him comply. He wasn’t the only Speerly they took, but he was the only one who survived. Do you know how?”
Rin shook her head. “I . . .”
Chaghan continued, ruthless. “Did you know they strapped him down and made him watch as they took the others apart to find out what made them tick? What are Speerlies made of? The Federation was determined to find out. Did you know they kept them alive as long as they could, even when they had peeled their flesh away from their rib cages, so they could see how their muscles moved while they were splayed out like rabbits?”
“He never told me,” Rin whispered.
“And he never would have.” Chaghan said.
“Altan likes to suffer in silence. Altan likes to let his hatred fester, likes to incubate it as long as he can. Now do you understand the source of his power? It is not because he is a Speerly. It is nothing genetic. Altan is so powerful because he hates so deeply and so thoroughly that it constitutes every part of his being. Your Phoenix is the god of fire, but it is also the god of rage. Of vengeance. Altan doesn’t need opium to call the Phoenix because the Phoenix is always alive inside him.
You asked me why I wouldn’t stop him. Now you understand.
You can’t stop an avenger. You can’t reason with a madman.
You think I am running, and I admit to you that I am afraid.
I am afraid of what he might do in his quest for vengeance. And I am afraid that he is right.”
When she found Altan, lying in that same corner of the ancient library he had been last time, she said nothing.
She crossed the moonlit room and took the pipe from his languid fingers.
She sat down cross-legged, leaning against the shelves of ancient scrolls.
Then she took a long draught herself. The effect took a long while to set in, but when it did, she wondered why she had ever meditated at all.
She understood, now, why Altan needed opium.
Small wonder he was addicted. Smoking the pipe had to be the only time that he was not consumed with his misery, with scars that would never heal. The haze induced by the smoke was the only time that he could feel nothing, the only time that he could forget.
“How are you doing?” Altan mumbled.
“I hate them,” she said. “I hate them so much. I hate them so much it hurts. I hate them with every drop of my blood. I hate them with every bone in my body.”
Altan blew out a long stream of smoke. He didn’t look like a human so much as he did a simple vessel for the fumes, an inanimate extension of the pipe.
“It doesn’t stop hurting,” he said.
She sucked in another deep breath of the wonderful sweetness.
“I understand now,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I’m sorry about before.”
Her words were vague, but Altan seemed to know what she meant. He took the pipe back from her and inhaled again, and that was acknowledgment enough.
It was a long while before he spoke again.
“I am about to do something terrible,” he said. “And you will have a choice. You can choose to come with me to the prison under the stone. I believe you know what I intend to do there.”
“Yes.” She knew, without asking, what was imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh.
Unnatural criminals, who have committed unnatural crimes.
If she went with him, she would help him to unleash monsters.
Monsters worse than the chimei. Monsters worse than anything in the Emperor’s Menagerie—because these monsters were not beasts, mindless things that could be leashed and controlled, but warriors.
Shamans. The gods walking in humans, with no regard for the mortal world.
“Or you can stay in Golyn Niis. You can fight with the remnants of the Nikara army and you can try to win this war without the help of the gods. You can remain Jiang’s good girl, you can heed his warnings, and you can shy away from the power that you know you have.
” He extended his hand to her. “But I need your help. I need another Speerly.”
She glanced down at his slender brown fingers.
If she helped him free this army, would that make her a monster? Would they be guilty of everything Chaghan had accused them of?
Perhaps. But what else did they have to lose? The invaders who had already pumped her country full of opium and left it to rot had returned to finish the job.
She reached for his hand, curled her fingers around his. The sensation of his skin under hers was a feeling unlike anything she had dared to imagine. Alone in the library, with only the ancient scrolls of Old Nikan to bear witness, she pledged her allegiance.
“I’m with you,” she said.